Memories of Antiquity: Classical Reception and Memory Studies

While the study of antiquity and its reception has been an important subject of study for centuries, theoretical approaches to the ways in which reception operates in practice have proven difficult to establish. Classical works, images, and narratives have a long- and wide-ranging reception history and in tracing this history, scholarship has long emphasized that classical receptions shift over time. Given the enduring and, indeed, expanding popularity of the classics, more recent approaches have started to explore those complex receptions as matters of mnemohistory, or cultural histories of memory. Memories of Antiquity builds on this view of classical reception as a mnemohistory by collecting a set of global and transcultural examples in which the study of classical reception is usefully conceptualised through the lens of memory. The collection is fundamentally interdisciplinary, featuring investigations of literature, pop art, photography, film, and even an actual play podcast. The broad scope of the volume creates a multitude of comparative points on how ancient stories and myths are reframed and remembered in different contexts, opening a dialogue for further inquiries into this rich and complex area of research.